Forgotten Skills of Cooking: 700 Recipes Showing You Why the Time-honoured Ways Are the Best

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'There's not much this gourmet grande dame doesn't know.' Nigel Slater, Observer Food Monthly 'Our first lady of food.' The Irish Independent 'Ireland's answer to Delia and Nigella.' Sunday Telegraph Stella magazine Based on the hugely popular courses at Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery School, this book reveals the lost art of making creamy butter and yoghurt, keeping a few hens in the garden, home-curing and smoking bacon, and even foraging for food in the wild. So many of our happiest childhood memories are connected to food. Rediscover the flavours of all-time favourites such as traditional stuffed roast chicken, figgy toffee pudding, and freshly baked scones with strawberry jam. Darina also offers lots of thrifty tips for using up leftovers in delicious ways. Essential reading for urban and rural dwellers alike, this is the definitive modern guide to traditional cookery skills.

Darina Allen is Ireland's best-known food ambassador and the bestselling author of Ballymaloe Cookery Course and Forgotten Skills of Cooking, which won the prestigious Andre Simon award in 2009. She campaigns for local produce, is a member of Slow Food Ireland and set up Ireland's first farmers' market. She has won many awards including the Guild of Food Writers' Lifetime Achievement award in 2013. www.cookingisfun.ie

Processed and convenience foods and shortcut cooking methods have become so entrenched in our culinary culture, it's easy to forget just how much we have forgotten about real cooking. But cooking instructor Darina Allen knows all too well. More and more of her students arrive having never cooked so much as an egg, or needing lessons in remedial onion chopping. She remembers one student who thought she'd ruined a bowl of heavy cream because she'd whipped it too much. She thought the clumps and clots in the bowl meant it was bad. "I said, 'Stop! Don't throw it out!' " says Allen, author of Forgotten Skills of Cooking. "I said, 'You've made butter!' She was completely fascinated." -- Michele Kayal Associated Press, 7/3/2014